When displaying an image on a display screen, the resolution is limited by the number of pixels or sub-pixels on the display. In some conventional systems, the display screen comprises a number of pixels which are split into sub-pixels. For example, each pixel may have a red, a blue, and a green sub-pixel. In other systems, the sub-pixels may be magenta, cyan, and yellow. In still other systems the sub-pixels may be yellow and purple.
Some conventional systems fail to take full advantage of the resolution of the display screen because they fail to use sub-pixels individually. For example, when displaying white, the system activates a red, a blue, and a green sub-pixel. In other words, the system only makes use of a pixel. When displaying black, this system will ‘turn off’ the red, blue and green sub-pixels as a group. Thus, each pixel will be used to display either a white or a black region because of the blending of the light from the sub-pixels. When rendering an image which would ideally be as seen in FIG. 1A, the image is displayed with jagged lines as seen in FIG. 1B. The leftmost portion 150 is formed by three pixels stacked on top of the other. In other words, there are three red, three green, and three blue sub-pixels in area 150.
Other conventional systems improve upon the above system by ignoring the different colors of the sub-pixels and activating each sub-pixel individually. If the region to be displayed is white, this system will ‘turn on’ the sub-pixel regardless of its color. If the region is to be black, the system will ‘turn off’ the sub-pixel regardless of its color. Thus, the output is as seen in FIG. 1C for a triangle which is white and surrounded by black. In FIG. 1C, the leftmost region of the triangle starts with a single red sub-pixel, following by two green sub-pixels, followed by three blue sub-pixels, etc. This increases the spatial resolution over the rendering of FIG. 1B, however, it is best suited for displaying black and white images. When displaying color images, this conventional system may have problems, in that it is based on the intensity of the input image.
For example, displaying an image which is mostly red, the system will ‘turn on’ the green and the blue sub-pixels even if there is no light at those wavelengths. Thus, were the triangle in FIG. 1A to ideally be displayed all red, turning on the blue and the green sub-pixels results in a false color.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a method and system for processing a digital signal for enhancing the image quality. These and other advantages of the present invention will become apparent within discussions of the present invention herein.